For those of you that are unaware, there is a book that has often been circulating around for quite some time titled “the 4-hour work week”. In the 4-hour work week, the author Tim Ferriss stipulates that an average person, with a little bit of luck and some excellent business savvy, could live very well on 4 hours of work per week. While this might sound great, it’s really not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Ferriss’ system states that by finding process “hacks” in his systems, with enough hacks you could vastly reduce the amount of time you spend working, and in turn by building a lifestyle business to suit your lifestyle.

While Ferriss himself has since used this “4-hour” brand for a whole series of books on hacking systems, the core concept behind the “4-hour” brand is that people would be happier if they did less work. Technically this might be true if you hate your job and don’t want to change, but doing less work does not equate to being able to build a lifestyle that makes you happy.

The 4-hour brand is defined by the idea that people aren’t happy due to the inefficiencies and time-wasting involved in their current lifestyle. By buying into the idea that happiness is equated with process efficiency, people can be lured into a false sense of happiness through their lifestyle.

The biggest problem that the 4-hour work week solves has very little to do with the happiness of the person that is working in it.

Statistically speaking, working 40 hours a week, and earning between $70k-$90k a year is actually pretty good if you like what you do. Some of the happiest people I know live the simplest lives, built around their own contentment in what they do, instead of what they think they should do.

And that’s really the goal isn’t it. Do what makes you happy, not what you think makes you happy. The rest falls into place.